Susan Lacke Takes On Her Next Challenge…Recording Podcasts

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She went from making fun of triathletes to tackling Ironmans, from drinking and smoking to healthy living and writing a book (Life’s Too Short To Go So F*cking Slow). What’s next for the fearless, shameless (and, interestingly…deaf) Susan Lacke? Podcasts!

As you can imagine, it’s hard for a deaf person to do podcasts in a traditional way. And though Susan is a champion lip-reader, most podcast interviews are done remotely, so lip-reading was just not an option. To work around this obstacle, Susan willingly pre-recorded her interviews at VeloPress headquarters with questions from the podcast hosts sent in ahead of time. The interviewer then sliced and diced the recording, interjecting their own voice where necessary, and voila! A podcast was born.

For technical reasons, one podcaster was required to record the interview over Skype. Susan had attempted to lip-read during Skype interviews in the past, so she knew that the video refresh rate on most video chat services just wasn’t fast enough to capture all the quick mouth movements a person makes while speaking. For this interview, a hearing person listened to the interviewer on Skype and simply repeated the interviewer’s question for Susan, allowing her to read the lips of the person in the room in real time.